Eleanor Rigby Book

Lonely people want to be dead, yet we're still not quite ready to go'we don't want to miss the action; we want to see who wins next year's Academy Awards.

Doug Coupland's Eleanor Rigby is tailor-made for dedicated readers fond of literature-focused social networking sites and who maybe, you know, sometimes think they should have more face to face interaction with other human beings but friends, in flesh and blood, can just be so exhausting. Liz, narrator and nondescript cubicle dweller, looks dormant on the exterior but engages in the whirling, detailed thought processes of a lonely person who can watch her surroundings with impunity because most people have forgotten she's there. She returns to her tomblike condo at night and, well, thinks some more.

Still, even the most careful lonely people cross fortune, and Liz's path includes German prisons, dead bodies near the railroad tracks, and space detritus falling at her feet.

And therein lies Eleanor Rigby's nagging problem. Coupland overuses absolutely groan-inducing plot developments, not just tugging at one's heartstrings but grabbing on tightly and wrenching the goddamn hell out of said strings until you want to kick the author in the balls to make him let go. If he's not tugging he's swerving left to right with the dues ex machina like a sugar-addled kindergartner describing a trip to Mars. And why? I'm not entirely sure. The book doesn't need all that tugging and swerving. Liz's internal dialogues are excellent, and Coupland's portrayal of a lonely person's reflections and perceptions could carry the book on its own. The plot distracted me from the characters.

The last thirty pages almost raised the rating to three stars, but…nah. I'd be lying. Had the book been longer I might have given up. I've heard The Gum Thief is great, so I'm going to check out that one. Coupland's got promise. Eleanor Rigby, however, shoots off like a Roman candle just wet enough to disappoint.